It is not a true Eurozone budget, it is not a true mechanism that can stop an asymmetric shock and certainly will not have enough firepower to reverse a real crisis, but for its champions, with France and Spain in the lead, what happened this morning is very good news. "It is a gigantic step in the right direction. The Eurozone Budget was an idea supported by France and in 2020 it will be a reality, to be operational in 2021," French minister Bruno Le Maire explained Thursday from Luxembourg .

"It has been a negotiation with a result that I am frankly very satisfied with. It is a starting point, there is a lot of work (...) but the progress and progress that is being achieved fully responds to the objectives that Spain had set ", agreed Nadia Calviño, the acting Minister of Economy. "It is a step but not symbolic," he joined in his last meeting as commissioner of Economic Affairs Pierre Moscovici.

The Eurogroup is a complex entity, where everyone wins no matter what happens, they put on the best smiles after the defeats and where often the important thing is not to get away with it, but to prevent at all costs that your rivals destroy the hard core of your aspirations Reconciling the positions of 19 or 28 governments is somewhat titanic, especially when the issues on the table are a matter of state, principles and philosophy. That is why in recent months Paris and Madrid have worked quietly to prevent The Hague and Vienna from neutralizing their plans for an embryo in the Eurozone budget.

What comes out is little, infinitely less than expected and promised at the time, and probably what is necessary for the next crisis, but Calviño and Le Maire know that in the EU you have to cling to what you have, however little be. Despite criticism for lack of ambition. The EU is built on ruins and the remains left by battles, and its thesis is that it is better to do it little by little than to give up fully, and wait for an auspicious moment and the change of winds. Because that almost never happens.

The Eurogroup met last night in Luxembourg, once again, to try to settle one of those issues that have been open for too long and that was in danger of languishing perpetually (such as the rate of financial transactions or the European Deposit Guarantee Fund). Last year, the European Council , the heads of state and government , gave a mandate to their ministers to design something similar to a single currency budget embryo. "Only two years ago, a fiscal capacity for the euro was a purely academic effort. Last night, after 11 hours of negotiations, we made it a reality. In December we launched the BICC , a budget instrument for the euro. Last night, it finally landed ", celebrated the president of the Eurogroup, Mario Centeno . "It has not landed, it has crashed and we have to assume it and work with what is left," a pragmatic European source also ironized from Luxembourg.

There were countries, such as those mentioned, that wanted a real anti - crisis mechanism , with the capacity to help a Member State ravaged by a crisis. When there is a problem, for example in the financial system, and the real economy is infected, it leads to the closure of the company and increases unemployment, automatic stabilizers make public accounts red, a vicious circle is created which is very difficult get out. The first thing that governments do, to try to maintain control and remain within the margins of the Stability and Growth Pact (maximum 3% deficit and 60% of public debt GDP) is to cut investment. The final result is very fresh.

For that, Paris or Madrid asked for a tool that can be activated when there are those shocks that hit north or south differently, large or small, depending on their characteristics. A float that keeps the investment when it is most necessary is an countercyclical bet. However, supporters of orthodoxy, with the Netherlands always in the lead, roundly refuse anything that seems, sounds or smells like more tax transfers . Articulated around the so-called New Hanseatic League, with Baltic, Nordic or central continent presence, they have been doing their best for two years to dilute the proposal, dilute it. With remarkable success, but not total.

In June it was already clear that the BICC , the acronym for this "convergence and competitiveness" instrument, would not be what Calviño claimed: a stabilizing tool. The word, in fact, is banned. Nobody speaks in Brussels about stabilizing, because it generates allergic reactions in hawks. That is why the pigeons speak of convergence, buying the language, and highlight how the "stabilizing elements" of something that will have just 17,000 million euros of the EU Multi-Annual Financial Framework as resources can be highlighted, leaving the door open for the future An Intergovernmental Agreement gradually increases the firepower. Because not even that, after months of debates, have managed to agree.

Of those approximately 17,000 million agreed (the exact figure will be defined later, but in that order of magnitude), which will be used to finance investments and reforms, just 20% , just under 3,500 , will be reserved to help countries in distress . That is why the Dutch minister, Wopke Hoekstra, celebrating with his team the result, congratulated himself that "better spending of the EU money will be made by linking the budget with the reforms. Thanks to the Finnish team for the effort!"

That means that 80% of the money will be distributed among all the members of the Eurozone, according to a formula that takes into account the population and the inverse of their income per capita, whether they grow at 10% or if they are in a technical recession. It will be an aid for investments and to accelerate the reforms that the European institutions, in the framework of what is known as the European Semester, recommend to each one. Through a co-financing in which each member must select projects and provide them with at least 25% of the necessary capital, except in cases of "severe economic circumstances", in which this ratio could be reduced by half.

Both elements, the modulation of the national cofinancing and that a part be reserved for emergency situations, were sine qua non conditions for Spain, which already flirted in June with the possibility of vetoing the agreement if it was diluted so much that it became an element redundant, as there are other ways in the EU for what the Hanseatics wanted. Also the governance. As agreed, national executives will set the course but it will be the Commission that "implements and manages the instrument, " Centeno explained.

There was also an important issue. Even so, in the United Kingdom, Member States that are not part of the euro refused to fund the BICC . "We are very satisfied today. We are happy for them, who have a budget, but we didn't want to pay it and we won't have to." "In the discussions on the Multiannual Financial Framework, in the coming weeks and months, we will see that the negotiations will be more concrete and intense. Our position, together with the Netherlands and Austria, is that in the EU it must be a responsible, modern budget." , explained this morning in a joint appearance Magdalena Andersson and Nicolai Wammen, finance ministers of Sweden and Denmark.

Spain did not want neither direct nor additional conditionality for those possible funds, because for that there are already Memoranda of Understanding and rescue programs. "It is clear that there is no conditionality beyond what can be determined for the community budget as a whole," said the head of Economy. Discarded that extreme, she and her team arrived in Luxembourg with optimism.

From the Ministry of Economy it was pointed out that unlike last June, this time it started from a more favorable point, after much positive technical work. "For us it was very important to have elements that guaranteed that this fund could have a countercyclical action even if the magnitude of the fund itself does not have a significant material macroeconomic impact . It is a starting point that can be the embryo of an instrument with an impact more significant in the future, "said the minister in statements collected by Europa Press.

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